Looking to invest?
Are you wondering how to start a successful investment programme on your site?
In this blog we’re going to look at how to understand the best way to kick off a new project where investment is required within your processing or manufacturing facility.
Perhaps you have a full understanding of what’s not working and so you can just get started without wider considerations; or maybe you need to replace a broken piece of equipment, or a machine that’s not functioning properly. That investment is more ‘every day’ stuff.
However, from an engineering perspective, it’s always better to have a look at what the real problems are and what outcomes are essential after making a large investment in your facility.
That’s where Bennett Engineering can provide fresh eyes, by completing an audit of what they can be seen as ‘blockages’ or issues within your process, place or people.
Let’s take Pepsico’s announcement of a £24m investment in the production facility that makes Quavers.
From the Bennett Engineering perspective, had been invited to review this pre-investment announcement, here’s what the approach would look like.
The first thing we would have done is to go and have a tour of the Quaver making facility. And by tour we don’t mean a guided tour from the production director or the works manager, we mean a ‘walk about’ where we can see everything from the start of the process, right through to the end of the process, and all that goes on in between the start and finish.
The team will also talk to the people operating the equipment and making the product; they’re the critical elements in kickstart an investment programme, because the people who are operating the facility day in day out will understand what keeps breaking down or what is too fiddly or unhelpful in the process. The team will also know what things are annoying on the site, what things aren’t safe and what things cause unnecessary issues with manual handling. The team will also know the facility inside out so they could highlight something that’s been an issue for many years that might have been overlooked because they know how to make it operationally okay.
Once those conversations have taken place and combined with our own visual inspection Bennett Engineering can roadmap out what needs resolving or makes the best starting place from investing to make a difference (whatever that difference needs to be).
It might be that you’ve got a really good idea on the outcomes that you want to achieve; in this example perhaps it’s making more crisps. Or maybe it’s having new lines to do different flavours of Quavers (have you tried the prawn cocktail?). Or could be that product development have hit on an idea of making bigger crisps or having Quavers in a different shape.
Understanding that outcome can then help you backtrack so that it’s easy to see what’s missing in your process or facility to achieve the wanted outcome.
The thing with investment is sometimes you just need to start small due to financial constraints combined with the need to achieve something or begin the journey to improve your facility or processes.
Back to Pepsico they are committed to the Lincolnshire processing site for Quavers and want their employees to use state of the art equipment to make the product line. The site operations manager Nigel Beilby said ‘demand for Quavers had grown in the last year, and the investment will increase capacity at the factory and make space for new production lines.’
If you’re in a similar situation, possibly with a lot less than £24million, and you need a guiding hand to understand the best place to start give us a call and we’ll get on tour with you. Because however much you are planning on spending it needs to be sensible, solve the real problems and get you the outcomes essential for any business.
Read more about the Pepsico investment here https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/pepsico-investing-24m-quavers-crisps-21510892
Or if you want to dive into a conversation to kickstart your investment programme talk to John or Craig on 01509 363 060
